These trees shall be my books and in their barks my thoughts.
Shakespeare, As You Like It
Why do some people carve messages and images into trees? Do words and sketches on a living thing enliven the thought, give it vibrancy lacking on other surfaces? Perhaps drawing on sylvan skin shares in the mystique of tattoos.
Gouging the bark of a tree is a form of vandalism I don’t condone. Whether conifer or hardwood, it leaves its victims vulnerable to insects and disease. Why would anyone endanger a lifeform that puts oxygen into the air merely to post a message? Trees may be usefully cut for house framing, furniture, and fuel, but to incise the bark just to mark one’s presence seems an unnecessary imposition of ego, at best. Nevertheless, some tree carvings intrigue me with synergies that connect natural objects and human expression.
Everyone’s seen carving on the smooth, smoke-gray bark of beech trees. Call them social register trees, they often bear names, dates, initials, hearts, and other designs. Analogous in some ways to canine-like behavior, apparently there are people who can’t help but mark their territory with knifepoints on bark. To those who admire the vigor and quirky growth habits of trees as an antidote to the regularity and endless written messages of the built environment, carvings seem self-defeating. A tree trunk is not meant to be a postcard.
Messages on trees can go well beyond the usual superficial scratches. A few years ago, I found an unusually large heart carved into a contorted, wind-bitten oak atop Pine Mountain on Connecticut’s Tunxis Trail. Distracted by both a view of distant ridges and turkey vultures wheeling overhead, it took me a moment to notice the deeply incised image in the rough bark. It had a heart’s classic triangular shape—pointed at the bottom and widening toward the top where a midpoint indent separated two rounded humps. There was no name, no initials, no Cupid’s arrow piecing it. I wondered about the carver, who must have taken a good deal of time to complete the work. Were they expressing their feelings for the woods? Affection for a long lost or unrequited love? A cinematic series of stories played in my mind as I continued on the trail.
Called “the old man in the tree” by those in the know, it’s a waist-high face peering out of a white oak in Connecticut’s Meshomasic State Forest. Looking out into the middle of the woods, the old man is not on any path, and the carver is a mystery. The friend who took me to see it said the face had been there for twenty years. It has a haunting look, and seems as if it might speak at any moment. The eyes are sad, a prominent nose protrudes, and the mouth has a non-committal expression. It has a worried appearance. Weathered woodgrain has left the face lined, like an octogenarian’s, and it radiated with all the beauty and gravatas of a museum piece. I imagined the strange countenance broadcasting the artist’s spirit. But whose face, was it? Why carve it in a spot where few were ever likely to see it? I thought of Ents, the tree-like beings of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.
Rather than being cut down and turned into lumber or firewood, dead or dying trees are sometimes crafted into full-fledged sculptures right where they grew. Often, they’re rendered as a bear, bird, or other animal, and are vaguely reminiscent of totem poles carved by Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest. Artists use knots, branches, grain, fissures and other aspects of the wood to help express the image they envision. It can almost seem as if the tree itself suggested the idea.
Orange, Massachusetts has had five or six dead street trees that have been turned into elaborate sculptures featuring animal and botanical motifs. In the mid-2010s, a community group called the North Quabbin Tree Sculpture Project raised funds and promoted creating works of art out of lifeless roadside giants, according to tree warden Colin Killay. They wanted to transform ugly liabilities into things of beauty, instill community pride and catch visitors’ eyes. Some of these tree sculptures are so vividly rendered and detailed that the carved creatures seem almost alive. They certainly give new life to dead wood.
On a drive through town one day after hiking in nearby woods, I was so startled on seeing one of these sculptures that I slammed on the brakes and sat transfixed. I got out and stared for a full five minutes, still uncertain I’d seen all the details, it was so exquisitely carved. Sculpted to represent a woodland full of plants and animals, from roots to high branches it included birds, snakes, a turtle, bear, beaver, squirrel and deer among other creatures. A finely sculpted eagle was perched at the top, wings outstretched, grasping a fish in its talons. The tree seemed not only made of many figures, but of endless stories. An ordinary residential street became an adventure.
Passing through the center of Farmington, Connecticut a couple winters ago, I spotted a man in a red jacket marking a large tree with the word “PEACE.” Carefully, slowly, tediously he formed each letter from snow that in sunlight had become sticky and easily packable. Without harming the tree, the message was as wonderful as it was ephemeral. Though it would soon melt away, rendered in large white letters along a busy road, it was probably seen by more people than most penknife carvings on beech bark would over decades. The perfect exclamation for a large, graceful tree.
